Wetwork
by Liimbo
Summary: Talon finds in pillowtalk a friend and brief reprieve from his cold world.


**Disclaimer: League of Legends is owned by Riot Games.**

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**Chapter 1 - Wetwork**

Talon rolled across the bed. He ached all over the place, but it was a pleasant ache of the rewarding kind. There was a contented sigh behind him. A pair of supple arms stretched above a head showered in dishevelled hair of chestnut brown, the length of the tresses running over exquisite cheekbones and full lips, slender neck and bare shoulders. Talon felt the cool palm of a soft hand cradle his chin, and fingernails lightly scratch the hollow of his throat as one would scratch a dog's chin.

'You alright?' His partner asked, leaning over him.

Talon felt her heavy breath near his ear, the air humid. 'Yeah.' He turned over. She looked like the cat that swallowed the cream, her mouth toying with a satisfied smirk. 'How was it?'

She held her head up and cocked sideways with one hand on cheek. She stared at him. 'It will suffice,' she eventually said. Talon frowned and her smirk widened to a full grin. 'I'm kidding.' She squeezed his arm. 'You were great.'

Talon didn't reply to that. 'So what now?'

She let her fingers trail over his chest. Lower. 'Now? We have a heart-to-heart. Get to know one another a little better.' Lower. 'Or if you want, maybe we can try again,' she suggested wickedly.

He stopped her hand with one of his own. 'I'm not exactly one for pillow talk.'

She raised an eyebrow. 'Energetic, are we?'

Talon eyed her. In the dark, her shape was indistinct and the lines of her figure were shrouded in darkness. But he remembered the feel of her thigh curled over his leg, the sensation of her stomach pressed to his and the smell of her sweat intermingled with light perfume. A second session would be good. 'Maybe we should talk instead,' he proposed.

She shrugged, seeming to be neither disappointed nor pleased. She rolled onto him. Talon felt sheepskin as she pulled the sheets over them both. He drew her closer and clung to her, feeling her briefly fidget for a comfortable position. 'We have a few hours left till daybreak.' She asked, tracing an incongruous pattern in his palm with the tip of her finger. 'What do you want to talk about?'

Talon stared at the ceiling. 'What's it like…sleeping with men for money?' He asked.

She paused. '…What's it like to kill men for money?'

'It's cold,' he answered. 'It's empty.' He recalled the texture of blood, how it slid over his hands like oil. 'It's wet.'

She squeezed his hand. It might have been to comfort him. It might have been a reflex of tension. 'I understand. It's the same for me.' She fell silent. Talon let her. Eyes closed, he played with her hair, running his hand through the strands, letting the silky quality lull him to some sense of serenity, some moment of peace.

It might have been minutes. It might have been hours. The room was still dark though. 'How do you cope?' she whispered languidly.

Talon hesitated. 'I take walks, gamble at cards.' He felt himself hesitate. 'Sometimes I come here.'

'Oh,' she murmured. 'I…see.' Was that a shudder?

'How about you?' He asked. 'What do you do?'

'…I try to talk to someone,' she replied quietly. 'I sometimes write.'

'What…do you write about?'

'Anything I can. But mostly…it's about…the clients I had.' Her voice had begun to shift. Its pitch was lower. Where it had been airy it was now low and throaty, real and not feigned. 'I try to get what happened out of my head.'

'I'm sorry.' She sighed at that. Talon bit his tongue, wondering if he said something wrong. 'I remember my first kill,' he said haltingly, changing the subject. 'It was my friend.'

'What happened?' No repulsion in her tone. Just simple curiosity.

Talon told her everything – the starvation and the cold from living life in the gutters, the anger at his friend for failing his part of the job, the sensation of knife parting flesh and the horror at the blood on his palms that wouldn't come off no matter how hard he scrubbed them against his threadbare tunic. At first, the words trickled out like a small stream, before they poured out of him like a wave. He found he couldn't stop. It felt cathartic. He eventually forgot that he was talking to her, and when he fell silent, she didn't say anything for a while such that Talon thought she'd dozed off.

'Do you regret it all?' She asked.

Talon opened his eyes. He couldn't see her eyes but he knew she was staring at him. He pressed a thumb to her cheek and rubbed at it, marvelling at the smoothness. 'What does it matter?' he answered. 'Regrets can't change the fact that it happened.'

'Perhaps.' She didn't elaborate. She let him continue to stroke her face. Talon wondered what she was thinking of the hands that held her, these hands that have wrung life out of others. He trailed his fingers around her neck, revelled in the slenderness. He knew if he tried, he could strangle her, break her throat. She probably did too.

She spoke, jolting Talon out of his musings. 'The first man that I took into me was three times my age,' she muttered quietly. 'He…We did it in a dirty bed at a room in a rundown inn for an hour. He paid me a fistful of coppers for the privilege.' She trembled. 'I was fifteen at the time.' Talon didn't answer. She continued, voice turning harsh. 'I hated him. I hated myself. As soon as I could, I snuck into a bathhouse the next night and scrubbed myself with water and soap till my skin was red and raw. I even swallowed some in my throat. I told myself it'll only be that one time. That I'll make money some other way.' She shrugged in his hands. 'But when no one could put food on the table, I found myself doing it again. Eventually, I gave up trying to stop myself.'

Talon felt his fingers touch something cold. He'd been meaning to ask her about this. 'What's that you're wearing?' He asked.

'Oh, this? It's a necklace.' He took it in hand. 'It was mothers,' she explained.

He traced the shape. 'It's more than that. It's a cross.' He let go of it. 'You're religious?'

'Not really, no,' she answered quietly. 'I don't believe in gods.'

'What do you believe in then?'

She rose herself up on both elbows and leaned over him. The cross dangled from her throat. 'Tell me. How many men have you killed?' She asked, whispering into his ear.

'More than I can count. How many men did you sleep with?' He retorted.

She breathed in sharply. He felt more than saw her glare. 'More than I can count. Did you kill women?'

Talon felt a snarl rise from his throat. 'Yes. Did you get with child?' He shot back angrily, not willing to be outdone.

Her nails dug into his shoulders like claws. 'Yes,' she hissed. 'Did you kill children?'

Talon went rigid. 'Yes,' he answered angrily. 'Did you?'

She started shaking and it was a few seconds before Talon realised that she was crying. It was all the answer Talon needed. Sitting up, he held her as she sobbed, and something within him broke. His own cheeks were wet. He didn't remember crying. He gasped, but not in pleasure. She groaned, but it was not one of ecstasy. He whispered in her ear, but the words were not ardent. He tasted salt on her face and her lips, found them bittersweet.

'It's not your fault. It's not your fault,' he muttered repeatedly, as if chanting a mantra, rocking her. 'Don't blame yourself. It's not your fault. I shouldn't have asked you that.'

She moaned in distress. 'It's not fair,' she whimpered. 'I don't deserve to be…I don't deserve this. I'm sorry.'

'Don't be.' Talon felt himself choking. He sat up and cradled her.

Hours later, the room slowly turned blue with the dawn as the first rays of sun shone. Talon picked up his clothes and dressed in silence, whilst she huddled under the sheets and gazed out the window, the curtains gently swaying with the wind. Talon threw on his boots and strode to the door.

'Will you come back?' She asked without looking at him.

Standing in the doorway, he glanced at her. 'Maybe. Would you like that?'

She turned to him, face damp and haggard from crying, eyes red. Talon knew his own face looked like that. She gave him a small smile. 'Maybe,' she answered. She looked back outside. 'It's raining,' she observed. 'You're going to get soaked if you go outside.'

Talon hesitated for a second, before he walked back into the room and sat near the foot of the bed. She crawled towards him, sat beside him and leaned her head on his shoulder, one hand clutching the bed sheets to her chest. They both stared out the window, listening to the drizzle turn into a deluge.

'You know,' Talon said slowly. 'I never caught your name.'

'Nor I yours,' she replied. 'What is it?' She laid a hand on his knee.

'Talon.'

'Renri.'

'Renri,' Talon said. 'Do you think the gods are watching us right now?'

She looked up at him sharply. 'Didn't I say I don't believe in them?'

Talon glanced at her collar, where the metal cross hung from. 'The fact that you're still wearing that leads me to think otherwise,' he remarked.

Renri averted her gaze. She removed her hand from her knee and fiddled with the cross, absentminded. 'I think they are watching, even now,' she muttered. 'We probably seem like drunken children to them. I sometimes wonder if there was a time in which they always spoke to us, guiding us, before they found it easier to let us be to make our own mistakes,' She gently exhaled. 'Yeah, that would be something.' She glanced at him. 'Why do you ask this?'

This time it was Talon who looked away. 'No reason,' he murmured evasively.

She stared. 'You're afraid, afraid for yourself. Aren't you?'

Talon shook his head vehemently. 'No. It's nothing like that. I'd already resigned myself to such things a long time ago.'

'Well then.' Renri tried another tack. 'Do you think they exist?'

Talon didn't answer and that was answer enough. Renri gave a heavy sigh. There was a snap of twine, and Talon looked at her to find her pressing the cross into his hand, curling his fingers over it, her hand warm. He didn't say a word and pocketed it. They continued to sit there, listening to sound of the world's crying slowly ebb away. 'It stopped raining,' Talon remarked after a while, when the torrent faded to silence.

'It has, hasn't it?' She agreed.

Talon felt his mouth curl into a grin. 'You still up for a second shot?'

She made an appearance of mulling it over, lips pursed and forehead furrowed in thought. 'No. Not really. You?' She asked cheekily.

'Can't say I am either. I'm already dressed as it is anyhow.'

Renri smirked. 'Oh? I daresay that'd hardly stop us.' She reached out with a hand and sharply cuffed his ear.

'What was that for?'

'Nothing. Nothing at all.'

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*Wetwork: a euphemism for murder or assassination; also known as a wet affair or a wet job.


End file.
